Indonesian Textiles at the Tropenmuseum

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INDONESIAN TEXTILES at the Tropenmuseum itie van hout sonja wijs

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CON TEN TS

8 9

Foreword Stijn Schoonderwoerd Preface

11 12 16 21

Museums, Science and Material Culture Introduction Collecting and studying The Tropenmuseum now

23 24 34

Textiles in Indonesia Foundations and influences Materials and techniques

43 45 50

The Colonial Administration and the Arts and Crafts Industry World fairs Lack of knowledge

55 56 64 77

Colonial Collections Clothing in pre-colonial and colonial society Batik in the Netherlands The colony in miniature

83 87

Collecting Haarlem The Colonial Museum, 1864–1923 Amsterdam Natura Artis Magistra (Artis), 1838–1920 Colonial Institute Association, 1910–45 The Colonial Museum, 1910 –45 The Tropenmuseum, The Royal Tropical Institute, 1950–2014

94 100 101 112

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121 122

129 142

The Presentation of Textiles: Trade, Ethnology and Design (Sonja Wijs) Haarlem The Colonial Museum, 1864–1923 Amsterdam Natura Artis Magistra (Artis), 1838–1920 Colonial Institute Association, 1910–45 The Tropenmuseum, The Royal Tropical Institute, 1950–2014

151 152 180 192 202

Catalogue Sumatra Java Sulawesi Sumba

216

Concluding Remarks

218 224 225 230

Notes Map Bibliography Index

127

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FOREWORD

Indonesian Textiles at the Tropenmuseum is the sixth and final publication in a series on the Tropenmuseum’s collections. This series explores the broadranging histories of collecting, study and display at the museum, framed regionally or thematically.

<< Hipcloth – kain panjang Made for the 1883 International Colonial and Export Exhibition in Amsterdam. The Ministry of Colonial Affairs donated this cloth to the municipality of Delft.

Cotton, batik 249 x 106 cm Tegal, Java Before 1883 TM-2335-15 Exchange: Stedelijk Museum Ethnological Collection, ‘Het Prinsenhof’ (The Royal Court), Delft, 1954 < Tubular skirt – sarung Cotton, gold leaf, batik, painted 208 x 114 cm Semarang, Java 19th century TM-903-16 Bequest: Maurits Enschedé, 1934

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The Tropenmuseum has a long tradition of ‘collecting cultures’. Tracing its history back to the second half of the 19th century with collections from the Colonial Museum in Haarlem and the Ethnographic Museum of the Amsterdam Zoo Artis, the museum’s early years are closely bound up with Europe’s expansionist and scientific ideals and traditions. Such collecting and representational practices would change over time, reflecting different moments in (Dutch) political and scientific history.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the collections moved to their current, purpose-built location in Amsterdam. After this, the museum widened its remit beyond a narrow focus on the Dutch colonies and by the mid-20th century started to collect, study and present objects from other regions around the world. Today the Tropenmuseum is experiencing the latest phase in its dynamic history. Having merged in 2014 with the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden and the Africa Museum in Berg en Dal to form the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, the Tropenmuseum is now part of a mission-driven institution, committed to utilising its collections to address contemporary societal issues.

At the end of the 16th century when Dutch travellers, scientists, colonialists and collectors first encountered the art of weaving in Indonesia, they were impressed by the high quality and intricate techniques of what they saw, especially on Sumatra and Bali. Since then, Indonesian weaving traditions have gained an international reputation, appealing to researchers, collectors and audiences across the world. As these textiles and knowledge about them became more widespread, Indonesian terms for decorative techniques such as batik, ikat and plangi also travelled.

These have become commonplace terms, due in part to the work of museums, even if the textiles themselves are in no way ‘common’.

The close connection between the museum and the Dutch state lends a unique character to the textile collection at the Tropenmuseum. Beyond telling stories about textile techniques, or about the lifeworlds of the peoples who made and used them, they are also embedded in the entangled relationship between the Netherlands and Indonesia, first as coloniser/colonised, later in development corporation and finally in the ongoing and everchanging postcolonial relations. Our work at the museum has been to uncover these different stories and this is what we present to you in this publication.

These stories emerge from objects of exceptional quality, especially those acquired from collectors such as Johan Ernst Jasper and Georg Tillmann.

All together these collections have placed the Tropenmuseum on the international map of Indonesian textiles, sought after for numerous national and international exhibitions and publications.

As director, I recommend Indonesian Textiles at the Tropenmuseum to you, our reader, hoping that you will enjoy this selection of objects from our collections and the multiple and diverse stories they embody. I want to thank everyone who made this book possible, especially Itie van Hout, former curator of the textile collection at the Tropenmuseum. To conclude, I want to thank the BankGiro Loterij and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, without whose support this publication would not have been possible.

Stijn Schoonderwoerd General Director

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PREFACE

This publication describes the formation, growth and character of the Indonesian textile collection in the Tropenmuseum. Important regional sub-collections that did not fit within this historical structure are discussed in the last chapter. The more than 12,000 fabrics and weaving tools form an archive of tangible and intangible heritage. This collection of objects contains information about the colonial relationship between the Netherlands and the Netherlands East Indies and various Indonesian cultures and peoples.

It is also a rich archive of materials, techniques and skills of several Indonesian weaving traditions.

The various chapters reflect the policy of the Dutch government towards the arts and crafts industry in the Netherlands East Indies and the activities of collectors, researchers and museum staff. Motivated by personal preferences, most of them approached their work in their own individual way. However, this freedom was always linked to the prevailing political and museum policies and scientific schools of thought at various junctures. For example, the investigation of materials and weaving and decorative techniques and general anthropological research were for a long time regarded as separate disciplines.

However, in recent decades, social scientists, field researchers and theorists have united these specialised fields. The resulting studies have demonstrated the essential value of knowledge of materials and techniques in the understanding of Indonesian textile traditions.

The collection of Indonesian textiles at the Tropenmuseum gained international fame while Rita Bolland was the curator of textiles (1947–84).

Rita Bolland studied manufacturing and decorative techniques and became a nationally and internationally recognised expert in this field. She recorded her knowledge in numerous publications, shared it with researchers and colleagues from home and abroad who visited the Tropenmuseum, and urged students to research textile techniques. Reason enough to dedicate this book to Rita Bolland (1919–2006) for her contribution to textile research, her inspiration, and as a highly valued colleague.

This book would not have been possible without the help of many people. First I want to thank Pauline Kruseman, former managing director of the Tropenmuseum and now supervisor at the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. This project would not have been possible without Pauline’s determination and tireless support. I would like to thank Sonja Wijs for her contribution about textile exhibitions. I am grateful to Ruth Barnes, Miriam Hoijtink, Wayne Modest, Pieter ter Keurs and Nico de Jonge for their advice, as well as Reimar Schefold, Susan Legêne, Wonu Veys, Koos van Brakel, Thomas Murray, Hester Poppinga,Tony Lith, David van Duuren, Daan van Dartel en Pim Westerkamp. The work of Jacqueline Boerkamp, Irene de Groot, Richard van Alphen and Ingeborg Eggink in selecting and photographing the collection in storage was of great importance. I wish to thank Jowa Imre Kis Novak for his help in obtaining images of some of the exhibitions.

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MUSEUMS, SCI ENCE AND MATER IAL CULTURE

< Ceremonial cloth – tampan pasisir See fig. 152

This ceremonial cloth unifies virtuoso weaving skills, religious iconography, social cohesion, trade, politics, the passion for collecting, and research. It was made in the distant past by a skilled and experienced weaver from the Lampung region in South Sumatra. The boat is the world, with mankind as the crew, floating on the sea with aquatic creatures, under the heavenly realm where the gods live with the birds as their messengers. The cloth belonged to a category of ritual gifts exchanged at weddings where they regulated the relationships between families. The boat is also a seaworthy vessel that was used to trade along the shores of the archipelago and beyond. This textile would never have come to the Netherlands were it not for the fact that the Dutch had colonised the archipelago and Georg Tillmann had to flee to the Netherlands to escape from German National Socialism (Nazism). It was part of the collection of this passionate collector who was also one of the first people to conduct a serious study of these textiles and publish his findings.

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Through making, using, exchanging, consuming, interacting and living with things, people make themselves in the process.1

Introduction The textile collection at the Tropenmuseum is a unique material archive in which historical and anthropological knowledge relating to Indonesian art and culture as well as political, economic and museological knowledge is preserved.2 The collection is comprised of everyday and ceremonial clothing, ritual textiles and tools used to produce the textiles.

The nearly 12,000 textiles from Indonesia were collected over a period spanning more than 160 years. The majority were brought to the Netherlands when the Indonesian archipelago was a Dutch colony, the former Netherlands East Indies.3 This colonial relationship has determined the composition and character of the collection. The textiles and garments in the Tropenmuseum collection come from cultures throughout the Indonesian archipelago, from Aceh on Sumatra in the west to Tanimbar, located far in the east. A small part of the collection consists of textiles that were made in the Netherlands for commercial and/or artistic reasons.

Indonesia’s population includes approximately 350 ethnic groups distributed over a large number of islands. Despite a great diversity in peoples and geography, weaving is arguably one of the traditions that unify them, as it is practiced throughout the archipelago. It is unquestionably its most famous and impressive art form. Over the centuries, traders, religious leaders and colonisers from Asia, the Middle East and Europe have to varying degrees left their traces in the archipelago. Different weaving traditions with a wide variety of textile techniques, patterns and colours arose from the interplay of climatic conditions, the availability of materials, innovation, from interaction within their own and with other cultures, and their prevailing ideologies and religions.

In Indonesia textiles were not only used for clothing: their role in social and religious life was of crucial importance. James Fox wrote powerfully and concisely in 1977 about the Indonesian weaving tradition: ‘Cloth swaddles the newly born, wraps 12

and heals the sick, embraces and unites bride and groom, encloses the wedding bed and, in the end, enshrouds the dead.’4 Probably since prehistoric times, textiles in this region have been a binding element in socio-cultural life and despite significant social and religious changes still play a meaningful role in the lives of many people.

This rich variety and history made textiles from Indonesia a collectible item for many Europeans.

Scientists, colonial administrators, Catholic and Protestant missionaries, soldiers, entrepreneurs and private collectors took textiles, manageable and relatively easy to transport, back to the Netherlands.

Packed in a suitcase or trunk, on this journey the textiles lost the function they had in their original context. Once unpacked in Europe, many ended up in museums where, just as in their cultures of origin, they were handled with care as objects to study, admire and preserve for future generations. The textiles acquired a new meaning in these museum institutions, both as representatives of distant, often unknown cultures, and of the Netherlands as a colonial empire. In the museum, the garments are no longer worn, the waxy fragrance of the cloths decorated with the batik technique has been replaced by the smell of mothballs, and the rhythmic ringing of the bells sewn onto the clothing is no longer heard.

They have become museum objects, studied and exhibited according to the changing views of social scientists and curators over the course of time.

From its onset in the 16th century, the presence of the Dutch in the Indonesian archipelago was mainly focused on the economic interests of the Netherlands.

Within the context of these commercial interests in the 19th century scholarly and artistic interest arose in the cultural traditions of the archipelago, especially in the batik industry. The attitude of the Dutch colonial administration towards Indonesian handicrafts would have major consequences for the economic development of the textile industry in the Netherlands as well as on Java. Administrative officials and researchers recognised that gathering knowledge about materials and techniques would benefit Dutch economic interests and safeguard the cultural and artistic values of this form of applied art.

Some of the studies that were carried out resulted in publications which are still considered as definitive works in their field.5

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1 Shoulder cloth – kain limar Silk, gold thread Weft, supplementary weft 200 x 88 cm Palembang, Sumatra Early 20th century TM-6207-34 Long-term loan: Gerardus van der Leeuw Museum Collected by A.Tj. Van der Meulen, 1862–1934

In this book the origins and the growth of the Tropenmuseum’s textile collection are presented together with the ideas and motivations of the collectors, their positions within the colonial system, their encounters with the local population and those who were involved in researching and exhibiting the collection in the museum and beyond.

The history of this collection and of the Tropenmuseum itself is inextricably linked to Dutch political – and especially Dutch colonial – history, but even after the colonial era, political developments strongly influenced the fortunes of the Tropenmuseum.

In the second half of the 20th century the interest in colonial history and its relation to ethnographic museums and ethnographic collections was addressed in the Tropenmuseum by defining and studying a new collection category koloniale collecties (colonial collections), referring to the material culture and the associated ideas of people who were close to the Dutch colonial community.6 These subjects and the backgrounds of the Indonesian weaving traditions are discussed in the following chapters, culminating in a presentation of highlights from the Tropenmuseum collection.

This chapter continues with an overview of developments in anthropology insofar as these relate to the study of material culture in general and to textiles in particular. Despite a long, though sometimes sporadic interest in objects as sites

for anthropological study, material culture studies remain an important nesting field. The history of anthropology is closely aligned with that of ethnographic museums. This began in the 19th century with the acquisition and study of artefacts thought to represent the lifeworlds of primitive or traditional societies.

Museums, science and material culture In the Indonesian archipelago the most experienced weavers created textiles that were essential to rituals that were performed to structure and maintain the interaction between humans and the world of their ancestors, and the interpersonal relationships among the living. As early as the 16th century, the beauty and luxuriance of the textiles, of the ‘fine cottons with gold thread’, aroused the curiosity of the first Dutch travellers to ‘the East’,7 and in the subsequent centuries also that of colonial administrators, scholars and others who expressed an interest in Indonesian weaving traditions. Many of them took back textiles to the Netherlands. The textiles, made of cotton or silk, the latter richly decorated with patterns in gold thread, or produced using the ornamentation techniques ‘batik’ and ‘ikat’ – unknown in Europe at that time – were exhibited in the Netherlands to testify to the country’s stature as a colonial power and demonstrate the cultural wealth of its Overseas Territories.8 The Netherlands basked in other

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2 Headcloth – iket Cotton Batik 118 x 113 cm Cirebon, Java 19th century TM-2210-1 Gift: C.Tj. Bertling, 1952

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people’s glory, though many at that time would have thought that this glory belonged to the Netherlands. Yet, compared to other forms of what was called ‘primitive’ art in Europe, art lovers and art dealers discovered this technically skilled and rich iconographic textile art relatively late after the Second World War. Nowadays these textiles are treasured by collectors and aficionados alike and are preserved as works of art and precious heritage (figs. 1–3).

These textiles had a different meaning for each of these respective parties: the weaver, the colonial civil servant, and the art collector. In each context a different value was assigned to the textile and the textile became part of a distinct story. To gain insight into these stories, into the history of an object, Arjun Appadurai wrote: ‘follow the things themselves in order to grasp the meanings that are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories’.9 Every piece of textile, but also collections that could be considered as a cohesive entity, have their own story to tell.10

Within anthropology, interest in textiles has not always been consistent. Even though clothing and textiles were desirable collectibles, it was only in the course of the 20th century that people realised that too little research had been conducted into this field.

Starting in the middle of the 20th century, social scientists began emphasising the social and cultural connotations of clothing and textiles and as a result, research into textiles has been given a permanent place in anthropology.11 Dress, Adornment and the Social Order, edited by Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Eicher Bubolz, and published in 1965, examined the relationship between dress and adornment and the social environment.12 Ronald A. Schwarz, however, came to the conclusion years later in 1979 that: ‘Clothing is a subject about which anthropologists should have much to say, yet remain mysteriously silent […]. Indeed, descriptions of clothing are so rare in social anthropology that the casual reader might easily conclude the natives go naked.’13 This is striking because it is not easy to find a human in time and space who does not ‘dress’ in the broadest sense of the word, ‘To be human is to dress, to dress is to be human.’14 In Cloth and the Human Experience, Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider suggested a relationship between the marginal attention to textiles in the social sciences and the possible lack of interest of male anthropologists in the activities of women, or in textile techniques and their products, or a lack of interest in both.15 The situation was slightly different in the Netherlands because of the colonial situation. Several male researchers had already expressed an interest in Indonesian textiles at the end of the 19th century.16 This limited intrinsic interest in clothes is also apparent from the information provided with the photographs in the Tropenmuseum collection. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was often members of the aristocracy who were photographed wearing precious clothes. The photographer, whether professional or not, would in most cases note the place where the photograph was taken, and sometimes the ethnic group and the social positions of the people depicted.

Details about the meaning of the richly decorated clothes were rarely given and descriptions were usually cursory, for example, the photograph of the ‘village head of Galoempang (Central Sulawesi) with his wife and sister dressed in festive attire’, or ‘studio portrait of the Crown Prince of Deli’ (figs. 4, 5).

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3 Shroud, ceremonial hanging â&#x20AC;&#x201C; papori to noling The cloth was purchased in 1936 by C.M.A. Groenevelt on Georg Tillmannâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s behalf.

The wife of missionary and linguist N. Adriani collected the cloth in Galumpang.

Cotton Warp ikat 175 x 131 cm Toraja, Galumpang, Sulawesi 19th century TM-1772-713 Gift: W.G. Tillman, 1994

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4 Headman of Galumpang with his wife and sister in ceremonial attire Photographer unknown 29.1 x 23.2 cm Galumpang, Sulawesi c. 1920 TM-60041774 Provenence: H. Wolvekamp

The growing interest in clothes and textiles in the second half of the 20th century, also manifested in large-scale anthropological fieldwork, was not an isolated development but part of a renewed interest in expressions of material culture. Because these ideas have influenced developments in the study of ethnographic textiles, some paradigms are outlined briefly here.

Collecting and studying Members of the nobility, wealthy bankers and entrepreneurs in Germany compiled the first methodical collections of ethnographic objects in the 16th century.

Their reasons for bringing objects from other cultures to Europe and displaying them in their so-called cabinets of curiosities were, in addition to gathering knowledge, a way to show off their wealth, influence and power.17 These motives did not differ much from the objectives of the European colonial powers that assembled collections of ethnographic objects from 16

the 18th to the 20th centuries. The objects the Dutch brought with them from foreign countries early in the 19th century were housed in the Museum van Oudheden (Museum of Antiquities, 1818) in Leiden, and the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Royal Cabinet of Curiosities, 1816) in The Hague.18 In the decades that followed, ethnographic museums were founded for these collections, such as the first ethnographic museum in Europe, ’s Rijks Ethnographisch Museum (National Ethnographic Museum) in Leiden (1837), the Koloniaal Museum (Colonial Museum) in Haarlem (1864) and the Ethnographisch Museum van Artis (Artis Ethnographic Museum) in Amsterdam (1871).

The collecting activities were driven by scientific ideals and economic and political objectives.

Scholars set themselves the goal of bringing together collections, including from cultures that were seen in the first half of the 19th century as belonging to the ‘the artistic canon of universal history’, such as the Hindu–Buddhist civilisation on Java and Sumatra.19 Influenced by Charles Darwin’s 1859

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5 Studio portrait of the Crown Prince of Deli Photographer: Asahi & Co. 28.2 x 16.5 cm Deli, Sumatra 1915–25 TM-60006770

publication, On the Origin of Species, and the birth of ethnography as a social science, this attitude underwent changes. The cultures were now regarded as the only remaining representatives of early primitive societies, ‘[...] before they were either transformed, or made extinct by the relentless march of “civilization” in the form of Western colonialism’.20 The bringing together of collections occurred in the colonial context of an unequal division of power.

However, in daily practice the colonial collector was at the whim of happenstance: which objects could be acquired was determined by chance encounters and what the local population provided. Systematic

collecting was usually not an option, as certain precious and often sacred textiles that had often been kept in families for generations, were seldom proffered. The idea that ethnographic collections would be representative of their cultures of origin has long been abandoned.21 With a few exceptions, it was only from the 1970s that textiles belonging to a family heritage found their way to Western collectors and museums. At that time the Tropenmuseum did not have an active acquisition policy, possibly because of the flagging political relationship after the independence of the young state of Indonesia. Some important types of textiles are therefore under-represented in this collection.

The collection tells us as much about the contacts between the locals and the Dutch both during and after the colonial era as it does about the different cultures in Indonesia.22 The study of objects in ethnographic museums in the 19th century led to the emergence of anthropology as an academic discipline. At the end of that century the first ever anthropology professors often combined their position at a university with a function in a museum.23 The focus was on the technological prowess of the cultures that made and used the objects. This interest was in keeping with the prevailing theory of evolution, which maintained that mankind progressed through several fixed stages of development (from hunter-gatherer to city dweller). The stages were identified by the relevant culture’s level of technological development.

In comparison to the civilised West, the living cultures where the ethnographic objects came from were considered as societies in an earlier, still uncivilised, stage of development. This objectoriented research ‘[...] organized by measures of technological progress, provided the empirical basis for grand schemes of social evolution, diffusion, acculturation and change’.24 In addition to bringing together collections, a core function of museums was to classify and document the objects. A scientific classification model was developed in the National Ethnographic Museum, the forerunner of the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnology), which arranged the collection in twelve functional categories (Groups). The collections were divided into ‘place of origin’, ‘type of material’ and ‘production technique’; the twelfth and final category was

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‘science, religion, ceremonies’.25 This way of organising was possibly grounded in practicality.

The documentalist at the museum would (physically) hold the object and begin the description logically using the information provided by its shape, material and production method. Only after that were the ‘abstract’ characteristics, the function and meaning of the object for its culture of origin, considered.

This knowledge was still very limited at that time because the people who purchased the objects mostly did so for reasons unrelated to ethnography as a social science. This method of classification resulted in an intrinsic division of cultural components in the documentation. The objects’ concrete and abstract, material and social/spiritual aspects were separated in this system, a distinction that did not exist for the creators and users of the objects in their cultures of origin.

At the end of the 19th century, Franz Boas in America defined a holistic approach to the study of non-Western cultures. Boas, a fierce opponent of the theory of scientific racism and socio-cultural evolution, opined that a culture had to be studied as an ‘integrated spiritual totality’ from the standpoint of four sub-disciplines, namely archaeology, physical anthropology, linguistics and cultural anthropology.

He considered knowledge of the material culture as key to understanding a culture. However, it was not sufficient to examine only the objects in museums, as was initially the case: objects should be examined in the socio-cultural context in which they are made and used. After gaining experience in fieldwork, Boas saw that problems could arise in analysing and interpreting the data because as a ‘Western’ anthropologist, he studied the collected material with an outsider’s understanding. He concluded that the researcher and the researched perceive reality in different ways.26 Others shared this view. Anthony Shelton wrote a century later in his study of the aesthetic appreciation of objects by the Huichol in Mexico: […] the real world, for the Huichol, is not the world that we perceive. […] aesthetics is not concerned with passive reflection, but with an active attitude to maintain or adjust a system of ethics inherited from their ancestral deities, which organises the world and define appropriate activities and relations within it. Material cultural 18

artefacts are essential ritual tools within such belief systems. […] Huichol aesthetics, unlike its Western counterpart, does not appear to make any distinction between signified and signifier. Its art is iconic in that it not only represents the deities but also becomes a manifestation of them and shares identical sacred qualities. […] It is necessary to examine the fundamental ontological categories of their (Huichol) thought.27 In 19th-century England, scientific developments followed a different route than in America. The British developed the aforementioned archaeology, linguistics, physical anthropology and social anthropology as independent disciplines. Henry Balfour, the first curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, used an interesting metaphor in 1938 to illustrate the different approaches within anthropology. In his lecture ‘Spinners and Weavers in Anthropological Research’, he called the specialists who study a culture from one particular discipline, ‘the spinners’. They collect the material, process it, and spin the thread. In contrast, the generalists – who analyse all the material collected from a broader perspective – are ‘the weavers’. They make connections and weave the threads into a whole, the fabric, the theory: ‘they will create not only a fabric but a pattern as well, by interlacing the “warp” of facts with the “weft” of argument’.28 From the 1920s the focus on objects and collections diminished in universities. New schools of thought – functionalism and structural functionalism – arose, which studied social phenomena and their interrelationships. The significance of objects was reduced to instruments that gave form to everyday life or were passive references to wealth or poverty, dominance or oppression. The emphasis was placed on social, political and economic aspects of culture and not on the material aspects, or as W.H.R. Rivers had already described in 1914: ‘the whole movement of interest in anthropology is away from the physical and material towards the psychological and social’.29 The contrast between the ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract’, the ‘material’ and ‘social’, ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’ now also played a role in academia.30 Although material culture did not vanish from the picture entirely for the simple reason that humans cannot be separated from their material world, academia by and large stopped studying objects and collections and, as had been the case in the early

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years, this research was undertaken within the confines of museums.31 Starting the 1920s, in the Netherlands Willem Huibert Rassers, initially a curator and later the director of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, and Jan Petrus Benjamin de Josselin de Jong, also a curator and later a professor of ethnology in Leiden, collaborated closely in the field of Indonesia’s material culture and ethnography in the role of Balfour’s ‘weavers’. Rassers’ interest was not primarily in the objects that would provide insights into their cultures of origin, but the opposite: knowledge of these cultures would provide insights into the significance of the objects for the respective cultures.32 In the 1930s De Josselin de Jong introduced the idea that certain regions on earth with sufficiently homogeneous and unique cultures (for example, the Indonesian archipelago) could be approached as distinct areas of ethnological study.

At the same time these cultures should reveal differences that could facilitate comparative research. This theory became known as the Field of Anthropological Studies (fas).33 The study of material culture was one aspect of De Josselin de Jong’s holistic approach. He and Rassers are considered founding fathers of structuralism in Leiden (de Leidse School).

With the introduction of symbolic anthropology in the 1960s, material culture was cast again in a central role. The distinction between ‘material culture studies’ and ‘anthropology’ could potentially be removed. As Peter Ucko put it, material culture was no longer seen as ‘the poor handmaiden of other aspects of anthropology’. In his research he demonstrated how a particular category of objects could open up ‘many areas of investigation of interest to a wide range of anthropological enquiry’, and that ‘the study of human artefacts can act as a bridge between most other aspects of anthropology’.34 In England this development originated from a renewed interest in technology, an interest that grew into a broad, multidisciplinary approach to material culture. In the Netherlands, Adriaan Alexander Gerbrands, professor of cultural anthropology at Leiden, expanded upon his theory of ethnocommunication in which he ascribed a central role in the study of cultures to the objects made by humans: ‘For there is no doubt that whoever has come to understand the language of things, has

thereby also discovered a key that provides access to the culture.’35 Research into material culture became a permanent part of the anthropological curriculum in Leiden. In the late 1960s, Hetty Nooy-Palm and Reimar Schefold manifested their interest in and involvement with material culture studies by developing the course Museum Studies and Knowledge of Material Culture within the Cultural Anthropology course at the University of Amsterdam. This they did with the Afdeling Sociaal Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (swo, Department of Social Studies) of the kit/Tropenmuseum. In 1969 Nooy-Palm, working at the swo, taught this subject at the Tropenmuseum with Rita Bolland, the curator of textiles.

In England Daniel Miller, Susanne Küchler, Christopher Tilley and others broadened the field of material culture studies into an interdisciplinary field of study in the 1980s and 1990s. They considered ‘materiality’ as an essential part of culture, and advocated an approach in which, among other disciplines, archaeology, (art) history, architecture and geography are all applied when examining how objects affect the ‘construction, maintenance and transformation’ of humans in a socio-cultural context.36 Miller investigated the relationship between subject and object and found that there is no fundamental distinction between humanity and materiality: [...] everything we are and do arises out of the reflection upon ourselves given by the mirror image of the process by which we create form and are created by this same process. [...] We cannot know who we are, or become what we are, except by looking in a material mirror, which is the historical world created by those who lived before us and confronts us as material culture, and that continues to evolve through us.37 At the root of this lies the process of objectification that can be defined as the process by which forms of human expression, consciously or unconsciously, in groups or individually, obtain concrete form.

Mankind, the subject, should be able to see objects as embodying intrinsic aspects of itself.38 People and material culture, writes Tilley, are two sides of the same coin: ‘Persons and things, in dynamic relation, are constitutive of human culture in general, societies and communities in particular, and in the agency of groups and individuals.’39

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The subject-object and material-immaterial dichotomy also influenced the study of ethnographic textiles. The importance of information about the physical and technical characteristics of textiles was acknowledged, yet only a few researchers studied materials and techniques, while others focused on examining the socio-cultural significance of textiles for society.40 The analysis and study of textiles in relation to material, technique and form, however could not be separated from the study of the textiles’ social and religious significance; they form a whole, as articulated by Küchler and Miller: ‘When fibres, fabrics and ways of wearing are the medium for one’s relationship to other people and to the gods, we cannot have “cloth” and “religion”; we can only have the materiality of cosmology.’41 A new generation of textile researchers embraced this holistic approach. In the 1970s, Mattiebelle Gittinger initiated and promoted research into textile traditions from Indonesia, among other places.

In 1979 she organised the groundbreaking exhibition ‘Splendid Symbols: Textiles and Tradition in Indonesia’ and wrote the eponymous publication.42 At the same time the first of a series of high-profile conferences was organised that not only stimulated research, but also resulted in publications that made the results of the research available to a wider readership.43 Attention was paid to both the sociocultural aspects of the textiles in their cultures of origin and to analysing the materials and applied techniques. They were, however, still largely treated as separate areas of study.44 At the same time an interdisciplinary cross-fertilisation took place in the Tropenmuseum, led by textile curator Rita Bolland, which has contributed to the recognition that knowledge of and understanding the techniques, the ‘material’, were essential for gaining insight into the ‘social’ function of the textiles in their respective societies. Field research in Indonesia also showed that technological aspects were inseparable from the roles textiles played. In the early 1970s, Marie Jeanne Adams was one of the first people who, through her study of a weaving tradition on Sumba, described how each stage in the production of a textile was associated with the successive stages in the lives of the Sumbanese, ‘In myth, ritual and social rules on Sumba, the stages of textile work are consistently linked to the progressive development of individual human life. These stages provide an 20

overarching metaphor for the phases of the Sumbanese life cycle.’45 The materials, the weaving and decorative techniques, and the choice of patterns and motifs determined how a textile looked, and influenced its significance within the community, ‘In asking what is the cultural component of technology, we are also asking what can technology tell us about culture?’46 Besides Adams, Ruth Barnes, James Fox, Danielle Geirnaert, Rens Heringa and others also stressed the importance of researching the relationship between the techniques and the social and religious aspects of the textiles in the cultures that made them.47 After the publication in 1986 of The Social Life of Things by Arjun Appadurai, which concluded that not only individuals but also the objects they create and use have a life story and a life cycle, the next step was to examine the mutual engagement of man and object and the effect that objects have on humans.48 With regard to the study of material culture, Pieter ter Keurs wrote: ‘[…] many quests for the spiritual, the supernatural, are also encounters with the material’, and ‘[…] the materiality of things is crucial to the functioning of people. It makes social relationships visible, often in the form of exchanges – it bestows status and prestige in the political arena, but also in everyday life – and it makes tangible what is incomprehensible.’49 In his book Art and Agency, published in the 1990s, Alfred Gell formulated an ‘anthropology of art’, which he defines as the theoretical study of ‘social relations in the vicinity of objects mediating social agency’.50 He considers art, and also ethnographic objects as a special form of technology and extrapolated how objects contribute to the formation of society: through their production, the way they circulate in society, and how society reacts to them.

He calls this the ‘technology of enchantment’.51 Although Gell’s work has been criticised by diverse scholars,52 his ideas remain valuable for the study of Indonesian textiles. He attributes an active role, ‘agency’, to objects in social interaction and proposed that objects ‘affect’ those who look at, possess or desire to possess them. Human beings, the makers and users of the objects, are, however, always the primary agents and the objects can only be agents in a secondary or indirect sense. Objects act as the vehicle through which people manifest and realise their intentions.53 Gell argues that certain features

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of objects, such as ornamentation, result in a personal attachment to things, and hence to social processes in which these objects play a role. Decorations are part of the ‘technology of enchantment’, which Gell defines as a ‘psychological technology [which] encourages and sustains the motivations necessitated by social life’.54 In the case of Indonesian textiles this also applies to the materials they are made of and their technological aspects. As for technology, Gell does establish a link between the ability of the object to enchant and the way it was made. He suggests a relationship between the perfect mastery of a technique, the form the object takes, and the effect the object has on people and their relationships: ‘the captivation, fascination, demoralization, produced by the spectacle of unimaginable virtuosity ensues from the spectator becoming trapped within the index [object] because the index embodies agency which is essentially indecipherable’.55 He thus concurred with Boas, who identified the same relationships in the confluence of perfect technique, the emotions and convictions of the creators, and the reactions of others, the users, to these objects.56 Gell concluded that objects may have an ‘enchanting effect’ resulting from the ability of these ‘perfect’ objects to touch the senses of man: ‘[T]he power of art objects stems from the technical processes they objectively embody: the technology of enchantment is founded on the enchantment of technology.’57 He concluded that objects affect the contexts in which they are used, the effect of the ‘material’ on the ‘spiritual’. The form that objects have been given due to the mastery of a technique influences the way people think about their world. Keeping in mind that ethnographic objects are often the representations or materialisation of social values, it is no wonder that Indonesian ceremonial textiles and their production processes have become important to anthropological study.

The Tropenmuseum now

1864 respectively. These collections consisted of indigenous natural products as well as expressions of material culture, namely, objects that were crafted and used by the inhabitants of the Indonesian archipelago and other Overseas Territories.

The Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut (Colonial Institute Association) was founded in Amsterdam in 1910. To house the institute and the museum affiliated with it, a large and lavishly decorated building was constructed on the Mauritskade. During the 20th and 21st century, the institute and the museum have undergone many name and policy changes because of politics. After the Proclamation of Indonesian Independence (1945), in 1950 the name of the institute changed to Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (kit, Royal Tropical Institute) and the museum acquired its present name, the Tropenmuseum. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded the museum until 2012, when the ministry announced that it would no longer support the Tropenmuseum.

On 1 April 2014 the Tropenmuseum was detached from the Royal Tropical Institute in order to form the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen together with the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden and the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal. Its 150-year relationship with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its predecessors, including the Ministry of Colonies, had ended; thenceforth / the Tropenmuseum fell under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

The Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen now manages one of the world’s largest collections of Indonesian textiles. People are still fascinated by the beauty and vibrancy of Indonesian textiles as an expression of a unique cultural tradition. It is hoped that this important collection will continue to attract visitors to exhibitions and inspire new generations of researchers who, under the auspices of the Rita Bolland Fellowship for Textile Research programme, can study the collection and continue to contribute to this important field of material culture studies.

The current collection at the Tropenmuseum originated in the 19th century at the Koninklijk Zoölogisch Genootschap Natura Artis Magistra (nam, Royal Zoological Society Natura Artis Magistra) in Amsterdam and the Colonial Museum in Haarlem, where objects from the former Dutch colonies were collected and exhibited from 1838 and M U S E U M S , S CI E N CE A N D M AT E R I A L CU LT U R E

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TEXT ILES I N I NDONESIA

< Model of a backstrap loom with twill weave See fig. 20

Although the broad variety of weaving traditions that have developed over thousands of years in the Indonesian archipelago is widely divergent, they share a common origin. Weavers in Indonesia drew on a broad palette of weaving and decorative techniques. Some may even date back to the birth of weaving. The textile on this model of a loom from Central Borneo is executed in a twill technique.

The pattern of small diamonds is related to Neolithic motifs on basketry and mats.

Textiles played a unique and signiďŹ cant role in the lives of the various Indonesian communities, and are a binding element in socio-cultural life and despite great social and religious changes still play an important role in the lives of many people.

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‘She found there was a rhythm to the shuttle and the sword which took the place of prayer. Every movement was a repetition, every repetition was a word. The warp, the weft and the tools took on new meanings.’58 Many anthropological studies have been conducted and wonderful books have been published about the textile traditions in Indonesia. Some discuss traditions from a number of islands; others focus on one particular island, or on one ethnic group.59 This chapter contains a brief description of the backgrounds of the various Indonesian weaving traditions, followed by a survey of techniques and materials.

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Foundations and influences Over the course of time foreign influences and the local responses to these resulted in a diversity of textile traditions in the Indonesian archipelago.

Different scholars have situated the origin of the practice of weaving outside Indonesia. Chris Buckley studied the spread of what he calls ‘the warp-faced tradition’ on the Asian mainland and Insular Southeast Asia on the basis of three prominent characteristics of this weaving tradition: a. the type of loom; b. ikat decorative technique; and c. the tubular skirt as a garment. Archaeological and

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<6 Ceremonial jacket A male and a female figure are depicted in squatting position on this barkcloth jacket. It originates from the border area between Kalimantan and Sarawak, the home of the Lepotau Kenyah people.1 Among the various Kenyah groups, the Lepotau are regarded as the founders of the Kenyah, they are the ‘proto-historic aristocracy’ and are considered to be the most important of all groups.

Barkcloth Stencil work 98 x 62 cm Kenyah Dayak, Borneo 19th century TM-1772-1131 Gift: W.G. Tillman, 1994

linguistic evidence and the distribution of these characteristics point to the conclusion that migrating peoples, belonging to the Austronesian language family and related to ethnic groups in the southeastern coastal region of China, introduced weaving to Insular Southeast Asia around 2500 bce.60 The cultures of the majority of the ethnic groups living on the Indonesian islands prior to the Austronesians’ arrival were either displaced by these migrants, or merged with the culture of the newcomers. The Austronesians brought changes in lifestyle and ideology, including, in addition to weaving, new farming techniques, the construction of wooden houses and seaworthy ships, and possibly also the technique of creating garments from barkcloth (fig. 6).61 Until today, the terms used in Indonesia for objects or activities relating to weaving are derived from the Austronesian language family. The type of loom – a backstrap loom with circular warp, which was used in this early tradition – was of the same type that has been used for centuries, and indeed still is today on several islands (fig. 7).62 Inextricably linked to this loom is the application of decorations and patterns on the warp threads, such as stripes in varying colours and patterns in the ikat technique.63 The introduction of weaving, the loom and the ikat technique marked the beginning of a textile tradition about which Mattiebelle Gittinger wrote:

[...] the Austronesians of Insular Southeast Asia endowed textiles with a worth that seems distinct from virtually all other peoples. This was not a monetary assessment, but a societal investment that gave to textiles a meaning that empowered them to enter into all aspects of life and to be viewed on many different layers of interpretation. In some instances the power of cloth extends beyond worldly social structures to relationships with the dead and even to cosmological levels.64 Living in a state of continual instability in a threatening environment, the early inhabitants sought a transcendental reality to rationalise emotional concerns such as fear of the unknown and the need for protection, fertility and continuity. People saw themselves and the world around them as parts of a dual universal entity, an entity outside which nothing else existed. Fundamental to this ancient belief system is the importance of notions concerning ‘status’ and ‘fertility’.65 Known as cosmic dualism, this system of thought divided the universe into two orders. Consequently, everything surrounding humans, including nature and all human activities were ordered into two opposing but complementary parts defined as either male or female: the upperworld and the underworld, sky and water, hot and cool, light and dark, headhunting and weaving, metal and textiles. The way to ensure the all-important

7 Weaver at a backstrap loom with circular warp Timor Photographer unknown 8.2 x 14.4 cm 1930–35 TM-60033652 Gift: H.J. de Jonge-de Leur

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8 Ceremonial textile â&#x20AC;&#x201C; fut atoni The pattern consists of large and small interlocking human figures, atoni. Birds are depicted on their ears, hands, elbows, knees and feet, and may represent souls that leave the body after death in the form of a bird.2 Cotton Warp ikat 218 x 133 cm Niki Niki region, Amanuban, Timor Late 19th/early 20th century TM-2071-14 Purchase: E.B. Geertsema-Beckering, 1951

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9 Ceremonial cloth â&#x20AC;&#x201C; pua kombu Cotton Warp ikat 180 x 116 cm Batang Lupar Dayak, Borneo 19th century TM-3892-7 Purchase: M.C.M. van Oordt-Reinders, 1970

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10 Ceremonial cloth – geringsing wayang Only on Bali cloths are woven with ikat motifs that are applied on both the warp and the weft, i.e. double ikat.

The technique is similar to the one employed for the silk double ikat cloths from India, patola. The human figures on the cloth are reminiscent of the representations on reliefs of East Javanese temples dating from the 13th and 14th centuries.

Cotton Double ikat 221 x 51 cm Tenganan Pageringsingan, Bali 19th century TM-1799-1 Exchange: Kunsthandel Lemaire, 1948

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continuity of existence was to keep these polarities in balance. Also crucial to life was the worshipping of the ancestors, the creators of the earth, the discoverers of new territories, and the founders of the communities (fig. 8).66 In the Indonesian textile tradition the women are the weavers, and men participate in the production of textiles by making the weaving tools. The emphasis on the human values of continuity and stability were expressed through activities in the domain of textile production – in the preparation of cotton, the spinning of threads, the dyeing process, the working with a circular, continuous warp on a loom, in the creation of patterns and the ritual use of clothing.

On the loom the circular warp without a beginning or an end is the basis from which a cloth emerges.

The circular threads were associated with the continuity of life, with the succession of generations, and therefore with the ancestors and the supernatural. The entire process, from preparing the cotton to completing the cloth, is considered a metaphor for the human life cycle.67 Human life and its interactions with the worlds of ancestors, gods and spirits were regulated by adat, the customary laws laid down by the ancestors and

kept alive by oral tradition. Adat rules prescribed behaviour in daily and ritual life to maintain the desired balance. Textiles were indispensable attributes in the cycle of agricultural rituals and rites of passage, i.e., birth, puberty, marriage and death.

One of the major activities defining these ceremonies was the exchange of goods, which represented the male and female aspects of the cosmic whole.

For example, textiles, ivory and pigs belonged to the female domain, while gold, weapons and buffaloes were part of the male sphere. Objects were the tangible means by which shape was given to the ritual behaviour required by the adat rules.

They contributed to the ordering of communal life, and thus to certainty in the complexity of existence.

Textiles also indicated clan affiliation, wealth, status and age. Throughout the archipelago rank depended on descent from the founding ancestors and on personal achievement. On Borneo headhunting and weaving were considered complementary activities.

In the egalitarian Iban society a marriage ideally could only occur when a woman had achieved a certain status by weaving a pua, a sacred cloth, and a man by taking a head. After a headhunting raid, pua with powerful patterns were used to receive the

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trophy heads.68 Status and fertility were the values that were materialised when trophy heads and sacred textiles were displayed at various ritually important occasions (fig. 9).

In the last centuries bce, new ideas and facets of the associated material culture spread over a number of islands once again, this time from a bronze culture (Dong Son 700–500 bce to 100 ce) in North Vietnam. Representations and motifs on Dong Son artefacts, including the famous kettledrums, are redolent of depictions of boats and human figures on Indonesian textiles. Decorations on ceremonial skirts from the Lampung region in South Sumatra are an example (see fig. 166).

From the first millennium ce the archipelago was influenced by cultures from different directions.

From Asia, the Middle East and Europe, merchants, religious scholars, representatives of imperial courts, explorers and colonial authorities visited the region once, came back several times, or decided to make the archipelago their home. Attracted by the abundance of natural resources and the opportunities offered by new markets, visitors from India and China were the first to arrive. Contacts between India and Sumatra

are thought to have been established in the first and second centuries ce by representatives of Indian rulers and Brahman scholars invited by the regional dynasties, who brought aspects of Indian religion and statecraft with them. In subsequent centuries the relationship with India was confined to the western half of the archipelago. Aspects of Hindu–Buddhism were steadily assimilated, facilitated by the fact that the Indian religious concept of the universe seems to have merged easily with local ideas on cosmology (fig. 10). From the 7th century, important kingdoms were developing in South Sumatra (Srivijaya, 7th– 14th centuries) and in central Java (Sailendra, 8th– 11th centuries). In these kingdoms with larger and more formal social organisations than the previous small-scale Austronesian societies, the function of clothing and textiles changed profoundly and weavers started using new materials and techniques.

Silk garments embellished with gold thread and also precious beads came to symbolise and legitimise the power of the ruling class. In order to weave these textiles a different kind of loom with a flat warp and a reed came into use (fig. 11).69 Although Indian philosophy had a negligible influence on the cultures on the islands in the east

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